True Love Ways

If
such a thing as love at first sight really does exist, then Maria Elena Holly,
Buddy's widow, says the two experienced that very thing the first time they
met, one June morning in 1958. Puerto Rican-born Maria Elena Santiago was working
at the New York offices of Peer-Southern Music, where her aunt Provi was head
of Latin music. Here, she recalls her first encounter with the man she would
marry just weeks later, and shares memories of life with Buddy the man, his
music, and the legend...

TRUE LOVE WAYSby Rick Thorne

If
such a thing as love at first sight really does exist, then Maria Elena Holly,
Buddy's widow, says the two experienced that very thing the first time they
met, one June morning in 1958. Puerto Rican-born Maria Elena Santiago was working
at the New York offices of Peer-Southern Music, where her aunt Provi was head
of Latin music. Here, she recalls her first encounter with the man she would
marry just weeks later, and shares memories of life with Buddy the man, his
music, and the legend…

“I
replaced the receptionist that quit, I’d been there about five days when Buddy
came in through those doors,” she says. “It was like a magical moment for both
of us. We fell in love immediately… it was love at first sight. I had no
experience of it but it does happen. I didn’t even know who he was, I’d never
seen a picture of him. The thing I remember is the name – ‘I’m Buddy Holly, I
have an appointment with Mr. Deutch.’ People in the office said this was the
young man whose 45 (‘That’ll Be The Day’) I’d been mailing to the disc jockeys.
He was on his way to meet Murray Deutch and I said ‘sit down, I’ll let him know
you’re here’. He said ‘oh sure, I’ll sit down’. The other two Crickets were
there but he was the one who started a conversation with me. He said ‘you have
an accent – where are you from?’ I said ‘well, I’m Spanish, I’m from Puerto
Rico but I live in New York’. He said ‘cool, you have an accent’ and I turn
around and say ‘you do too’ – it was a Texas twang. Then he asked me to go out
to dinner or lunch. I said ‘I’m sorry, I cannot do that. The policy of the
company is that we don’t go out with people that come into the office.’ I had
never gone out with anybody before. But I liked the guy immediately, it was an
immediate connection.”

Buddy’s
spontaneity would take hold of the ‘situation’. “Eventually I guess he talked
to Murray Deutch who phoned my aunt and gave him a reference, said Buddy’s a
nice young man,” says Maria Elena. The two got together for dinner at P. J.
Clarke’s that evening.

“We
came into the restaurant, we sat down, and he said ‘would you excuse me? I’ll
be right back’. He came back with his hands behind his back and sat down and
pulled out a red rose. My aunt always said that musicians are not ‘all there’,
they’re crazy. That thought came into my mind – these people are crazy! So,
five hours we’d known each other and he popped the question. I began, sarcastic
about it, ‘well, do you wanna get married now or do you wanna get married
later, maybe after dinner?’ And he said ‘no, I’m serious about it, do you wanna
get married?’”

Buddy
and Maria Elena married on August 15 at a private ceremony at the Holley home
in Lubbock, although the marriage didn’t become public knowledge until after
Buddy’s death. The two moved to an apartment in Greenwich Village and the young
Puerto Rican girl was now very much part of the whirlwind that was life with
Buddy Holly. She says:

“Living
with Buddy was a constant challenge because he was always thinking of the
things he wanted to do. He wanted to open offices in New York and a recording
studio, a publishing company. Even at that time he was thinking about
developing other artists. The way Buddy thought about all this was ‘I wanna be
able to deal with every facet of the industry’. He was producing Waylon
Jennings at that time, and Lou Giordano. He also mentioned he wanted to score
for movies. I said ‘Buddy, do you think you’re going too fast?’ and he said ‘oh
no, no, no – I’d like to write a score for a movie and possibly study acting’.
You could see he was determined. He was a very laidback individual, but driven
about his music. He wasn’t afraid of getting involved in something new, of
doing new things. He loved Mahalia Jackson, he loved Ray Charles, he listened
to all kinds of music. He said to me ‘we need to go to L.A., I want to go and
see if I can catch Ray Charles before he goes on tour, I want to do an album
with him. Maybe we could do something together, I know it would be great.’
Nobody had thought of doing that then. And we did go. We went to California
looking for him – we went to his house but he wasn’t there, he had already
gone.”

For
some, the Buddy Holly legend first captured the imagination during his
month-long tour of England in 1958. Buddy mania swept the country and his
creative influence was to prove far-reaching in the formation of British rock
‘n’ roll. “I met him when he came back from the tour in England,” says Maria
Elena. “He said ‘I’m thinking of doing more tours out there, but the main
reason I want to go back is because I heard so much talent out there. I’m also
thinking about opening a recording studio, so I’ll bring the talent in and
develop it.’ With the Beatles and everybody that followed, he was on the right
track.”

Fitting
then, that it was on the London stage that a new chapter in Buddy’s legacy was
written, in the form of the musical Buddy
– The Buddy Holly Story.

“The
first time I was invited to see the show it was Paul Hipp playing Buddy in
London,” recalls Maria Elena. “When I saw Paul on stage it was like seeing
Buddy. This guy was like a twin brother on stage, it was unbelievable. I
couldn’t sit through the whole thing, I started crying. I had very mixed
emotions, it was so real and I was not prepared for that.”

Maria
Elena is delighted the show has continued to run, 25 years on, in London’s West
End and on numerous national and international tours. But what does she think
it is that has struck a chord with so many people? “First of all it’s Buddy’s
music,” she says. “Buddy was very versatile, he wrote a lot of different types
of songs and no two songs are alike. Plus they’ve done a terrific job of
putting the highlights of Buddy’s career into two hours. Just seeing the people
enjoying themselves, and getting up and dancing to Buddy’s music and getting
excited – that makes me so happy.”